Nanny software company introduces elder-care aid
Two Philadelphia attorneys who developed payroll software for people with nannies have come out with a similar product for employers of caregivers for the elderly.
Robert Dougher and Adam Garson developed ElderCarePay after learning how many of the customers of their first product, NannyPay, were using it.
"We discovered a lot of people buying the software didn't hire a nanny or baby sitters at all, but were actually paying nurses or elder-care providers of one sort or another," Garson said.
Like its predecessor, ElderCarePay calculates federal and state taxes, generates all necessary reports and forms, and prints pay stubs or payroll checks. It also comes with a guide on employing elder-caregivers.
Dougher and Garson just began marketing the software through ElderCarePay.com. Prospective users can try it for 30 days for free; one-year subscriptions cost $147.95.
The two lawyers also have come out with a version of NannyPay for more than one employee. It costs the same amount as ElderCarePay. The one-employee version of NannyPay is $97.95 per year.
Dougher and Garson attended Temple University's Beasley School of Law in the 1980s, practiced together briefly and remained friends.
They shared an interest in computer programming. In the mid-1990s they took a course in it at Penn State Great Valley.
At the time, Dougher was futilely searching for a program that would compute federal and state withholding taxes and related items and print out pay stubs for just one employee. He and Garson decided to develop one for a class project. They got an A, massaged the program a little, and made it available for sale on Dougher's Web site.
"To our amazement, someone bought it," Garson said.
That made them think there was a need for the software, so they rewrote it so it could be reproduced easily and began selling it as NannyPay.
Over the years, the software has amassed thousands of users and been featured on CNN and in articles in Business Week and Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine.
But its sales have been leveling off. As a result, when Dougher and Garson learned people were using it for elder-caregivers, they decided to come out with software specifically for that purpose.
"We needed to find a bigger market," Garson said.
The two sell NannyPay and ElderCarePay through Essentia Software Corp., which they founded in 1996. The company is virtual in terms of having no headquarters, but it does have full- and part-time employees to take and fill orders and do marketing. Dougher is the president and Garson the vice president, although they act as co-presidents. They also both continue to practice law.
In addition to selling NannyPay through Essentia's Web site (essentia-soft.com), Dougher and Garson have a network of nanny agencies that promote it.
"We're hoping to develop the same kind of network in the elder-care area," Garson said.
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